“Bea,” her mother answered impatiently. This time, Rita didn’t correct herself.
Bea went on. “I was just thinking, you know, sweetheart, if you ever need a few pointers…For example, what you said to Fidgety in Phoenix? Well, I don’t agree with you. This poor woman was having serious sexual issues, and I don’t think you took the right approach. You had the wrong perspective. Not that you probably could have had the right one, given the fact that you choose to live your life in cloisters.”
“I do not,” Rita managed. “And there’s nothing wrong with what I said to Fidgety.” Her throat was tightening up, and it was the kind of automatic response that even a swig of her favorite coffee couldn’t fix. Being a relationship writer, seeking out the right words with which to say the right things, was enough of a challenge. Being a relationship writer, and living in the shadow of parents whose two blockbusters on sex and relationships had taken up permanent residence on every bestseller list in Christendom, and whose names were buzz words on the talk-show circuit, was a different story. Beatrix was a sexologist with a collection of erotic art that made her cocktail parties a hit. Her father was an anthropologist whose doctoral thesis on the primal nature of human sexuality was still one of the most requested documents in half the universities on the East Coast. As proud as she was of them, it didn’t cheer her up to know they scrutinized every word she wrote.
Beatrix was undeterred. “Feel free to run your column by me next time. It wouldn’t be a problem. Torrance and I—” Torrance was her father. He insisted that Rita call him by his first name, too “—we’d be happy to help. And by the way, when’re we seeing you? We’re home for a whole week. After that, ah…”
Rita jumped on the small conversational bone. “You’re off again?”
“As usual. No rest for the wicked.” Beatrix laughed. “We’ve got a whole week of signings in the southwest. Three or four radio programs, couple of TV spots. Most of them cable,” she added dismissively. “But we are looking forward to being back in Vegas again. You know how much your father loves the cabaret. He finds it…inspiring.”
Ick, Rita thought. Here it comes….
“Last time we hit the clubs, your father ordered champagne and strawberries up to our suite the minute we got back. I don’t have to tell you, most of the champagne wound up in the hot tub—”
“Mom!” Rita pleaded. Beatrix relished regaling strangers with stories about her erotic adventures with her husband, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a daughter needed to hear about her father. Why couldn’t she just have a mother who played mahjongg and a father who liked golf?
“All right,” Bea gave in. “Have it your way. Wouldn’t want to traumatize you. But that offer still stands, okay?”
“Okay, Bea. Thank you. I will,” Rita promised, scanning the sky for flying pigs. “But I really have to go. I’ve got a deadline.”
“Say no more, I read you loud and clear. I’m hanging up, okay? But I’m aching to set eyes on you. Don’t forget we live in the same town, all right?”
Rita smiled. “All right. I’ll see you soon. Maybe over the weekend.”
“Looking forward to it. Love you, baby.” And before Rita could return her mother’s air kisses, the line went dead.
The conversation left her feeling as though she’d done two rounds in the ring with Tyson. Rita slumped forward, resting her forehead on the cool tabletop, and took several deep breaths. Ah, parents. Couldn’t live with ’em….
But there was work to be done. She went back to her e-mails. Junk…more junk…and then the next few messages in her In-box made Rita pause and frown. There were five e-mails, all coming from the same address, all sent within the space of three minutes, sometime yesterday. The first thing that came to her mind was that they were more of the much loathed spam, but something stopped her before she could wipe them off her screen. The subject lines of all the messages were identical: Dear, dear, dear Rita. That was puzzling. Spammers didn’t yet have the ability to identify each of their targets individually. That technology just did not exist…did it?
Cautiously, she opened the first message.
Dear Rita,
Bet you think you’re real smart.
A.F.
Rita pursed her lips. A lot of her mail came from readers, rather than people with questions. Fan mail. Some were complimentary, even fawning. Some were from men wanting to date her. A lot of it came from men in prison—all wrongfully convicted, of course—who swore they had nothing but love and respect for their “strong Nubian sister.”
But not all of it was that good. Frustrated individuals, readers offended by a column or bored Web surfers looking to start a flame war—she’d had to deal with them all.
She moved to delete the other four, assuming they’d be more of same, but stopped in mid-action, morbidly curious to see what else this person had to say. She opened up another. I bet you think you’re all that.
Someone needed to lighten up. Resisting the other three e-mails was impossible; she opened them all up at the same time. Don’t you? read the third, and the fourth, in bold caps, DON’T YOU???
Unease replaced amusement. She opened the final message with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. It was cryptic—and a little too threatening for comfort.
Are you afraid of heights?
A.F.
Rita felt her skin crawl. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. She took another look at the e-mail address, but it was simply A.F., the same as the writer’s signoff, coming from one of those generic mail hosting Web sites that everyone used when they preferred to keep their regular one private. She had one herself. That wasn’t much help.
She hit the Delete key a little harder than necessary, sending the offending messages into the ether, and leaned back in her chair. This called for another chug of coffee. She lifted her cup, but it was empty. She left her possessions where they were. After all, she’d been a regular here for years. It wasn’t as if she thought anyone would touch her stuff for the few seconds it took to go to the counter and back. She ordered another coffee, keeping it simple this time. Plain, with the tiniest squirt of hazelnut in deference to the aforementioned, lamentable eight extra pounds. She went back to her table, sat and downed half the steaming cup before returning her attention to the glowing screen before her.
A new e-mail had come in.
It was from A.F.
Even the coffee wasn’t enough to keep the chill out of her blood. She opened it at once, and stared at the unblinking words before her. How’s the coffee?
Chapter 2
R ita felt the hair at the back of her neck snap to attention. She put her hands to the base of her skull, tugging at the long, dark brown double-stranded twists that fell about her shoulders. How’s the coffee? How could this man, whoever he was, know where she was, and what she was drinking? The possibilities nauseated her. Either someone knew her habits so well that he could make an educated guess as to her whereabouts at seven every morning, or she was being watched. Right at this very moment.
Wildly, she looked around, unable to keep the movement casual and circumspect. Had she been followed? Could someone be right there, in Starbucks, quietly watching her? She glanced from table to table, her heart feeling uncomfortably large in her chest.
But all she could see were the regulars, caffeine addicts just like her who turned up every morning, just as she did, to sit in companionable, familiar surroundings while they had their morning fix. Rita knew them so well, she even had names for them.
Across from her, there was the tall, agonizingly thin man who wore business suits and smelled of expensive cologne. Every day he carefully withdrew the financial section of the papers to read over his coffee, then left as silently